


Of Service

by Raikishi



Series: Of Service [1]
Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Blood and Injury, Character Study, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Injury Recovery, Service Submission, Whump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-11
Updated: 2020-10-11
Packaged: 2021-03-07 18:54:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,417
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26942485
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Raikishi/pseuds/Raikishi
Summary: Felix has few fears. Even less after the war.“Your Grace! The Queen! She–!”That cry, spoken in a voice teetering on hysteria, happens to be one of them.Felix deals with emotions through acts of service
Relationships: Felix Hugo Fraldarius/My Unit | Byleth
Series: Of Service [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2187168
Comments: 11
Kudos: 107





	Of Service

Felix has few fears. Even less after the war.

“Your Grace! The Queen! She–!” 

That cry, spoken in a voice teetering on hysteria, happens to be one of them. 

* * *

“Stay out,” Mercedes and Annette demand of him in one voice.

Felix thinks to argue at first, harsh words rasping like sand over the tip of his tongue. It’s an old habit to throw up anger in the place of fear and grief, to dig at an opponent with words as sharp as his blade and cut just deep enough to relieve some of his own terror –

Neither of them grants him the time to do so, spinning away from him to lay Byleth back against the infirmary bed. 

Felix watches, helpless as a babe, as Byleth shivers. He’s never seen pain like that on her face before. She looks at him but he can tell she does not see him. Her eyes are glazed over and sightless. He can see her struggling to breathe, her entire body twitching as a threadbare breath rattles the air. The noise is wet, sickly with blood and –

_Goddess, there is so much blood –_

Felix sucks in a sharp hiss, his entire body screaming at him to leap to her side – to take his place beside her as the Royal Sword. Her husband. As her –

“Felix, I will not tell you again,” Mercedes snaps and he startles at the crack of ice in her voice. 

His foot hovers just over the doorway. He steps back instead, heel clicking dully against stone. 

Mercedes turns her back on him, rolling up her sleeves. Her hands move, slow and sure over the gaping wound in Byleth’s side, burning with cold magic. 

Two people push pass him. He recognizes one of them. He’d scared her once on the monastery grounds, made her uncomfortable with his resting face alone – _you glare, darling –_ but there’s no trace of that now. She fixes him with an openly frustrated look as she sidesteps him, carrying a tray of equipment that makes his stomach drop.

“Please, your Grace, we must ask you to leave the infirmary doors clear,” she says and though there is the base courtesy there, he can hear the words for the command they are.

He stumbles out, his feet clumsy and stupid but sure enough to carry him into the hallway. 

He glimpses Annette’s glyph over Byleth, green wind twisting over her head, sweeping up over her chest. He watches Byleth’s body tense and then go loose. Her hand, which had been white-knuckled against the sheets fall aside with a finality that makes his stomach lurch. 

_She’s not dead._

He knows. Understands enough of magic to know Annette was only putting her to sleep. Dulling the pain. Making Byleth pliable beneath Mercedes’ skilled hands. He knows that sometimes to treat an injury it would require a little more pain than Byleth could bear right now. 

The knowledge does not stop terror from tearing his mind, a rabid little rodent gnawing on the very edge of his sanity –

_Maybe this is what drove Dimitri to madness –_

He remembers a half-feral man, lost to grief and drowned by ghosts. For one very long terrifying moment, Felix sees the same path for himself if Byleth – if – 

Felix is only aware he is on the ground when his ass meets the floor. His jaw works around painful memories he does not like to think on. Even five years after the war, memories of Gronder still cut as deep as the scalpel Mercedes is putting in Byleth now –

“Don’t,” he breathes out on a quivering voice he has not allowed himself to make since Glenn, shaking as the door shuts in his face.

* * *

Waiting is agony. 

He spends it spiraling between terror and anger, flipping between the two as easily as the long-dead Acheron did between armies. He watches as bloody sheets and bandages are carried out. Tracks trade of fresh water and dirty basins. Catches glimpses of Mercedes with her hands in Byleth –

The last glance sends him to his feet. His entire body trembles with the need for action. He walks with great purpose to no real destination and winds up pacing circles on the monastery grounds.

Linhardt arrives when he is wandering through the stables. He takes one look at Felix and then shoves his horse’s reins at him instead of the stablehands. 

“Feed my horse,” Linhardt orders and does not wait to hear Felix’s response.

It’s not in Felix to stop the healer - not when he was running to Byleth - so he does as he is told. The horse lips at his sleeve as he tosses down roughage. 

_It could stand to be groomed,_ he notes and sets about doing so.

The work is mindless enough to be comforting. 

Face brush first. 

Then curry comb. 

Body brush.

He goes through the motions half-blind, working in smooth patterns until the coat shines beneath his hands –

_“Takes exactly the effort you put in,” Sylvain says, nuzzling his mare. His gaze goes distant as he pats her snout, smile going dreamy, “If only people could be like this.”_

He’d looked exactly the same bleeding out on Gronder, one hand on his chest, his warhorse lipping at his cheek as he’d combed a bloody hand through its mane. Wearing that same stupid dreamy smile – 

Felix swallows back the acid that fills his mouth, his mind going stupid with fear as he replaces Sylvain with Byleth. His mind flits back to the infirmary again – 

Byleth had been cradling her stomach, her hands soaked through with blood.

He shakes the thoughts. Puts himself to work detangling the tail, working the ends upward with trembling hands. He combs through the matted hairs, going through strand by strand until the tail was clean and thoroughly brushed. He braids it into a thick cord just to keep his hands moving, remembering childhood superstitions as he weaves a spare ribbon into the tail. 

“ _To scare away witches and bad luck,” Sylvain says but he’s hiding a bruise on his chest in the shape of Miklan’s hand so it must not work._

It doesn’t work now, either. 

There is no one coming to find him with news of Byleth.

Felix decides to tackle the stables next.

He cleans the floors. Replaces the bedding. Repairs a squeaky door. Polishes the equipment –

_Why is no one coming to tell me anything –?_

And refuses to let himself think.

Felix works until his back aches and his arms throb, pretending he can outrun the ghosts by keeping busy for the living. 

* * *

Annette does not find him until sunset. Her shadow finds him first, stretching long over the stable grounds. He stiffens at the sight of her, the fading sun making the blood on her clothes too dark, casting a macabre image that sets his mind to racing. The bedding fork drops away from him, hitting the ground with a dull sound he doesn’t really hear.

“Tell me,” he demands, only vaguely guilty for the sharpness of his words when he sees the weariness in her face.

He steadies himself to listen, back so straight it feels as if his spine has turned to iron. 

He’d never been the sort to shy away from truths. Hadn’t been with Glenn. With Dimitri. And now –

“She’ll be okay,” Annette breathes out and a weight he had not been aware of cracks in two over his shoulders. He thinks he’s fallen to the ground again but he’s still staring Annette in the face so he must not have. She’s still talking, “– ribs and a leg –“

“What.”

It’s a question but the way the word grinds out between his teeth makes it not one. Byleth would make fun of him for it. She _will_ make fun of him for it. The thought makes him dizzy.

Annette gives him a complicated look, full of relief and concern and fading terror all at once, “It was scary for a bit there. There were a lot of breaks. Three ribs. A fracture in her leg. The bones of her left hand –“

“Not her sword hand,” Felix says and then kicks himself for the callousness.

Instead of chiding him, Annette only gives him an understanding look and allows herself a giggle, “No – she’ll be relieved to hear that. I’ll have to ask that you keep her off the training grounds for the next month at least..”

“I won’t let her move.”

He’ll sit on her if he has to.

Annette nods as if this were obvious, “She has quite a few bruises. And that hideous gash over her chest where the Demonic Beast carved into her –“ She shivers, hugging herself, her face pinched, “Oh, Felix, it got so close to her heart. If she hadn’t had that stone instead …”

Felix flinches at the implications, his fingernails digging half-moons into his palm.

_Ingrid grabs at her chest uselessly, expression twisted through with pain. Someone had rammed into her chest hard enough to shatter her breastplate. More than enough to shatter her ribs. One of them must’ve stuck wrongly because he can hear the wet rattle of her breath and the thick bubbling sound of blood replacing air. With a morbid understanding, he realizes he is watching her drown in her own body._

His body aches with the need to keep working.

“You go get some rest,” he tells Annette, offering her an arm, “Get washed up. I’ll bring you some tea.”

She hesitates but accepts. He can see the adrenaline bleeding from her, leaving her drained and empty.

“The Professor is sleeping right now - magic-induced,” she says around a yawn, “I have to relieve Mercie in two hours' time.”

“I’ll wake you. My office has a lounge and it’s close enough to the infirmary.”

Annette nods and they split up at the baths to clean up. He makes her the promised cup of tea and a hot meal and watches over her as she devours it. She falls asleep almost immediately after and he pulls a blanket over her shoulders before bringing Linhardt and Mercedes their meals. He returns their plates back to the kitchen when they do not allow him to stay. 

He does the dishes in place of the kitchen staff, deaf to their protests. He continues to ignore them as he sweeps out the dining halls and wipes down the tables. By the time he is done, there is no one to protest his actions so he sets about looking for more tasks. He works until the moon is high in the sky and it is time to wake Annette and then after that –

He does not really remember, only dimly aware of the ache in his body and the exhaustion pounding a headache into his temples. Only knows that he falls asleep beside a too-still Byleth, wondering if –

_This is how she looked in those years she’d slept under Garreg Mach –?_

And praying he would not have to wait another five years again. 

* * *

“You look terrible,” Byleth says three days later. 

Felix snorts awake, head snapping up so quickly he feels a twinge of protest in his neck. 

“Ha,” he says, voice cracking around the syllable, heart pounding as he meets a familiar gaze. 

Byleth’s lips curl, her smile affectionate. 

She’d made the same quip the first time she’d woken up in an infirmary bed with him at her bedside. It hadn’t been funny five years ago when she’d had the shit kicked out of her by Imperial soldiers. It’s not funny now. He tells her as much, muttering the words against her mouth as he kisses her.

Her giggle washes over him like a balm, the low rumble of it soothing over his skin. She reaches out for him and he meets her halfway, folding her hand in his, rubbing little circles against the wrapping Mercedes has trapped her in. Byleth grimaces at the sight of the cast, a little pout to her lips as she twitches a few fingers.

“Want to touch you,” she mumbles morosely. 

Felix guides her hand up to his face, eyes sliding shut against the faint press of her fingers against his cheek.

“How’s that, your Majesty?”

“Better,” she says and her breath hitches as she tries to shift.

“Don’t,” he tells her, a warning in his voice.

That’d never stopped her before. He watches, scowling, as she shifts and adjusts. Her expression changes like one of the dancing men Sylvain used to draw on his notebook corners. A grimace. A pinch. A little sigh. She catalogs her own injuries with a distant understanding. 

He repeats what Annette has told him in an attempt to stop her and Byleth sighs at the list. Frowns when he informs her she won’t be moving off a bed anytime soon. 

“I heal fast,” Byleth says with a little curl to her lip. As if to prove it, she sets herself alight with her Crest. The emblem flares over her chest, magic licking at her throat and cheeks and – 

She doubles over, coughing fitfully. Her breath rattles, her entire body shaking in Felix’s arms as she tries to suck a breath back into her mouth. Felix raises her up, his entire body drawn tight with panic, concern beating war drums in his heart.

Familiar green magic slips over Byleth’s mouth and chest. It lifts the strain from her and grants her a breath.

“Professor,” Linhardt says, his expression blank but his tone full of judgment, “Please do not try to undo all my work. I’ll have you know, I’ve already missed two naps yesterday because of you.”

Byleth grunts, rubbing at her chest, “That was just the ribs resetting.”

Linhardt doesn’t roll his eyes but Felix has the impression that he wants to. 

“You’ve lost too much blood. Your body’s already doing its best to recover. Pushing it further by activating your Crest won’t help things,” Linhardt says. He places a tray in front of Byleth - oats with a bit of honey, “Eat that. And then leave it to the healers and your own body to recover.”

He makes a little motion, his fingers glowing green.

“I’m going to put you under again once you’re done,” he says and she mutters something under her breath. Linhard tilts his head, “I can put you under for a month’s time if you insist on trying to outrun your injuries.”

He speaks in that too-callous way of his that implies he does not particularly care either way. It makes for an efficient threat.

Byleth utters a sigh and takes up her spoon. She frowns at the tremble in her hand and grimaces when she tries to lean forward to compensate. She outright glares when Felix takes the spoon from her.

“Let me,” he whispers and Linhardt leans away from them, burying his nose in a book, pretending not to hear the plead in Felix’s voice.

Byleth bites her lip.

“Please?” Felix asks, his voice quiet enough only they can hear.

Very slowly, Byleth nods. 

The relief that comes over him is enormous and a little idiotic. As if he were a superstitious fool who believed he could put his wife back together again with simple service. The awareness doesn’t stop his entire body from buzzing each time he takes a spoon to her mouth. Doesn’t stop him from taking too much comfort from the satisfied way she leans back when she’s done. 

“Need anything from me?” he asks in her ear as green magic pours over her, a part of him aching for a command. A request. Anything. 

Byleth yawns, her eyes glazing a little as she starts to drift, “Be here when I wake up?” 

It’s not exactly what he’d meant but the not-quite-order soothes him nonetheless. 

“Where else would I go?”

* * *

Byleth wakes up in bits and pieces throughout the week, suffering the attention of others each time she wakes up. Felix says nothing about the way she squirms under their concern, only busies himself with easy tasks about her room whenever she takes visitors. 

“There was a Demonic Beast at the gates,” Byleth says to Hilda and Marianne, “I did what had to be done.” 

“And you have guards and soldiers for a reason,” Hilda huffs, indignant, “There was no need for you to go running.”

Felix silently agrees as he rearranges the flowers Hilda has brought, separating the bouquet into separate vases. He cuts away at a missed thorn, listening with half an ear. 

“It appeared behind us and –“

“And you went lunging towards it,” Hilda interrupts with a wave of her hand, “Your guards are meant to protect you. Not the other way round.”

Byleth hums, noncommittal, silently disagreeing but not willing to voice the thought. Hilda growls in frustration, for both herself and Felix. 

It’s Marianne that offers a better rebuttal. 

“It’s all well and good that you’re so confident in your own abilities, Professor,” Marianne says. Her attention is still on the apple she’s carving, but the quiet, deliberate way she speaks makes them all listen, “But may I remind you that you are meant to be their leader? You were our key strategist during the war. I know you know how to dispatch them effectively.”

Byleth's lips purse. She doesn’t offer an argument. Felix marks a win for Marianne and Byleth pinches him when she spies the smirk on his face. 

* * *

Other members of the Golden Deer make their visits. Raphael and Ignatz bring baskets of fruit and news of those who could not make the trek. Lorenz settles in the monastery, picking up the work Byleth has left behind, coordinating with Seteth on dividing her duties. Claude, who cannot make the journey, sends increasingly worried letters until Felix returns a correspondence dictated by Byleth that is full of her squalling to be free of her bed. 

Squalling, for Byleth, of course, meant a single terse line and a moment of long heavy silence filled with the vague sense you were doing something wrong, angled towards Linhardt who’d come to put her under again.

Left over from her Professor days, no doubt. Felix is grateful her healers have grown immune. 

Linhardt only shrugs, biting into one of the apples Raphael has brought, ignoring her silent demand shamelessly. 

* * *

Byleth is let loose the second week when her hand has healed enough to be out of the splint and she loses the tremble in the other. She demonstrates the recovery by feeding herself and Felix pretends he does not dislike relinquishing that duty. 

Mercedes frees her on the promise that she would not attempt training and that she would return regularly for checkups. Byleth promises both with too much eagerness. Felix is reminded of less reliable mercenaries who favor coin over everything else and knew how to dodge their employers after judging the job too troublesome. 

He keeps to Byleth like a shadow when she’s set free, intent on ushering her back into the infirmary if she so much as stumbled. It’s not a new sight, the Royal Sword beside the Queen, but Byleth bristles at the new attention and overwhelming care. She doesn’t quite scowl but he can sense the irritation in her when he has to retrieve books and parchment for her or lend her a hand on particularly uneven paths. 

Always so uncomfortable allowing others to care for her.

“I’m going for a bath,” she declares after he’s had to help her take a piss, her cheeks faintly red and her mouth set in a grim line. 

She’s halfway down the hall before he can follow. With a click of his tongue, he orders the maid to heat water for the bath, and speeds up to catch his wife.

For a woman on crutches, she could still move.

He catches up to her in their room. Her crutch is on the bed and she’s struggling with her shirt. He can hear the uneven hiss of her breath as she tries to yank it off without raising her shoulders too high. Before he can offer assistance, she cuts through the fabric with a dagger. Does the same for her pants. The maids scurry out of the adjoining room as Byleth hobbles to the bathing tub, no doubt glimpsing something on her face. The Queen was slow to anger, unlike her husband, but when it rose, the servants knew to flee. 

Thankfully, her husband had never learned. 

“You’re not to get that wet,” Felix reminds her, eyeing the cast on her leg. 

“I won’t.”

Lies.

She nearly sets her foot in a puddle by the tub. 

She gives him a look. Daring him to comment. 

When he doesn’t, Byleth hobbles slowly around the bath, examining the way the maids have laid out her supplies. There’s a washbasin and ewer on a table nearby and a small stool for her to step up into the bath but –

He sees her eyes flick to her cast. She picks up an ewer, holding it for a long moment as she glances between it and the crutch in her other hand, glaring at the items as if they were Imperial spies threatening her students. Her hand twitches and he half-expects her to pour the water over her head in a desperate attempt to get clean. 

Taking pity, Felix moves to help her, tugging off his own shirt and pants before he takes both the ewer and crutch from her. 

“I can manage,” Byleth says.

“I know,” he says, “But you don’t have to _manage._ Not while I’m here.”

Byleth stares at him for a long moment, something like an argument building in her. Still the same woman who’d crawled out half-dead beneath ruins, ready and willing to fight another person’s war. Not knowing when to relent to another’s care. 

He kisses her, slow and thorough, partially to convince her, more so to solidify her presence. 

“Just let me do this for you,” he says, a little too much desperation in his voice. He’s relieved when she nods. 

She sits on the stool and tilts her head back. He cleans out old blood and grime from her hair first, working from the ends up to her scalp. Byleth shivers at the drag of his nails. He scratches up a long line from the base of her neck to the crown of her head just to see her eyes flutter shut. The tension drains from her in increments and he spends a little longer than he has to, relishing in the way she goes lax. 

He takes a washcloth to her back, scrubbing at the worst of the dirt and blood, digging his thumb carefully into tense muscles until she sighs and goes loose. Her eyes open in slits when he takes a washcloth to her collar, watching as he soaps at her collarbone and chest.

His fingers pause over her ribs, head tilting in question. In lieu of a response, Byleth takes a full breath. He feels the steadiness of it beneath his fingers and hums, satisfied. He scrubs at her skin, mindful of the new wounds –fresh scars for him to memorize and trace later – and kneels between her legs to clean her unwrapped thigh. Almost instinctively, Byleth’s hand curls into his hair, holding loosely. 

The touch anchors him, makes his cheeks warm and his heart race. Unthinking, he turns his head into her palm, squeezing her calf as he kisses the point of her pulse. He can feel her gaze on him turn sharp as he scrubs down her leg. Can hear the faintest change in her breathing as he massages the tension out of her thighs. She readjusts her grip, curving her palm over the back of his neck and he shudders when she squeezes. Byleth’s uninjured foot settles in his lap. She doesn’t remove it no matter how hard he tries to glare it off. She also does not try for more, only presses her knee against his chest and her heel into his thigh, watching him thoughtfully as he rinses her off.

* * *

To his surprise, Byleth doesn’t utter a single word of complaint as dries her off, only turns this way and that and raises her arms to assist. She’s still watching him with that thoughtful look when he wrings out the last bit of water from her hair. 

It’s a hell of a thing to have the entirety of Byleth’s attention. Claude had been the only one who could stand against it without squirming or blushing and even he had his moments where he’d had to look away. 

Byleth always stares with too much focus, aimed like an arrow at the very crux of Felix’s thoughts. The same Professor who’d guided him through sword forms and teased out the ghost of Glenn from his sword stance alone.

“Wha–“

“I’m still here,” she interrupts him.

He flinches at that and her thighs lock around him. They tense as he tries to pull away and he does not dare try too hard for fear of injuring her further. Her fingers drift over his arms, locking briefly around his wrists. He shudders at the touch, vulnerability a hot slash in his chest. 

“You almost weren’t,” he says, dredging up something long buried. 

The words cut on his lips, ugly and rotted through.

“I don’t have a lot of fears left anymore. Not after the war. No – not after Gronder. I overcame exactly three of them that day,” Felix says, feeling rubbed raw with the confession, “Don’t make me do it again.”

Byleth’s breath hitches, old grief surfacing hard and fast. He knows she’s lost people in the war as well. Remembers her stone stare as she’d left Edelgard’s throne room. He’d sat with her for a long time on the outskirts of Enbarr, listening to the roar of victory behind them and refusing to partake. Just as she’d done for him at Gronder. They’d sat and watched Dedue flee with Dimitri’s corpse. Watched the carrions feeders come and go and the fires of Gronder peter out to smoke and ash. 

He startles when she touches his cheek, drawn out of the past. He leans into their present with a desperation that should embarrass him, chasing after the pulse of her wrist. She holds it to his ear, leaning in to touch their foreheads together. Her breath is warm against his lips. 

Evidence of life. 

The feel of her steady as the march of time. Nearly makes him believe he’d never have to overcome this particular fear.

“You would hate if I swore my life to you,” she reminds him and he huffs out a sound that is half-way between laughter and a sob, “But I can let you put me back together.”

He nods. 

“Let me take care of you,” he breathes against her mouth. 

“ _Fraldarius has always been duty-bound. Tied to a commander,”_ his father had told him once. 

He just hadn’t chosen the same commander his ancestors had.

“Give me a task,” Felix pleads, pressing an open-mouthed kiss to Byleth’s jaw. Her throat, “Put me in your service. Give me something to do. To latch on to – I need –“

She kisses him silent and he accepts eagerly. 

Mindful of her injuries, he leans his weight on one arm, angling himself towards her right as he settles between her legs. The kiss is slow. Sweet and tender enough his heart swells to bursting. He makes a questioning noise in his throat when Byleth pushes him back.

“You can put me to bed tonight,” she says and there’s a little note of command that makes him stiffen. Her fingers curl against his chest. Just a little scratch that brings his focus over to her, narrows it so that she is all he sees, “Comb out my hair first. The hairbrush is in the vanity drawer. The right one. Bring my clothes from the closet. The set you bought me a week ago. Dress me when you’re done with my hair. Sound good?”

She scratches him again and he bobs his head in a nod.

He moves as if in a dream. The buzz in his body heightens into a live current. Thoron rumbling beneath the skin. His pulse trips in victory as he finds both the hairbrush and her clothes. Satisfaction curls in his chest as he turns to see the heavy approval in Byleth’s eyes. 

He lays out her clothes beneath her heavy gaze, every part of him drawn tight with awareness, his body bright and buzzing with the knowledge he was doing something right. Something she’d asked for. He slots himself behind her, ignoring the familiar heat between his legs at the position, focusing, instead, on the task at hand. He combs through teal locks slowly, pausing every now and again to detangle a knot with his fingers, relishing in every faint sigh Byleth lets out and losing himself to the steady even rhythm of her breath. She shivers as his fingers find the divot behind her ear. For a fleeting half-second he thinks to put his mouth there. Make her feel even better. But she’d not asked for that so he only combs through the rest of her locks dutifully. He pats her on the back when he is done and drops to his knees to tug her pants on. 

Byleth offers no assistance, only tracks his motions with a half-lidded gaze. He is careful and controlled with her, never pulling too hard or too quick. He finds that he enjoys the amount of attention he has to put into his movements, deliberating on each touch as he would with his sword forms. 

Vaguely, he remembers Sylvain’s many lectures on the intricacies of sex and intimacy, including a long side-note about service and subservience, but Sylvain is not here now. The memory is old and it is all too easy to turn away. Especially when Byleth rubs at the back of his neck in approval and thanks him with a small kiss at the corner of his mouth.

“Want to keep you naked,” she says, a distant smile on her face, “The mercs used to say skin to skin was the best healing magic. Stack a pillow for me and blow out the candles.”

She rubs his cheek, considering for a moment before leaning down to kiss him sweetly. 

He’d told Lysithea he hated sweets long ago. Sugar made him slow and dull. Dampened his senses. Here and now, he cannot bring himself to mind. He only closes his eyes and lets himself be overtaken. 

“I’ll still be here in the morning,” she says and he quivers at that promise.

He carries out her last orders and then slides into bed beside her, curling up carefully against her right. Her thigh nudges between his legs and he grunts at the contact, faintly surprised to find himself half-hard.

“Maybe in the morning,” Byleth murmurs.

Definitely not. He’s not trusting himself to rub off against her with her injuries but cannot bring himself to vocalize the statement. He settles for a frown instead. Byleth chuckles at his face and then rubs up the back of his neck, thumb tracing the ridge of his jawline until he lost the glare. 

She hums something under her breath – another vulgar merc song - as she pets him and that feels nice enough his eyes droop. 

Her movements are languid and at ease, without a trace of pain and discomfort. Pride bubbles in his throat and he nuzzles into her neck. The heat between his legs isn’t urgent and it fades a little further, drowned in the warm satisfaction that sweeps through him. To know that he did that – set her at ease and smoothed away pain at least for a moment. He sighs in contentment and curls tight against her, sliding his hand under her shirt to hold her waist. His thumb smoothes over the bumps and ridges shaped by her stitches, feeling out the new marks and scars, and idly counting out each stitch. 

Terrible wounds but not enough to steal her from him. 

Not enough to take this moment from him.

Her pulse rumbles in his ear, pulling him under. 

He imagines he’ll make her breakfast tomorrow morning. Comb out her hair again before dressing her for the day. Offer his shoulder to her and serve as a crutch. Read her the latest reports and pen her correspondence if she’d like – 

He falls asleep halfway through his thoughts, a soft, “I love you,” following him down. 

**Author's Note:**

> 10000% just an excuse to write Felix as a service sub -- also this was supposed to be straight up pwp. I don't know how we got here ; o ;


End file.
